The Real Deal--DJ Mannie Fresh & MC Gregory D (1992)

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“Growing up in the 80s I was a hip-hop kid. I was into Doug E. Fresh, Whodini…I was on everything that was popping around that time. And I was a huge Hurby Luv Bug fan. I loved the [production] he did for Dana Dane and Sweet Tee. My whole style can be traced back to the influence of New Orleans bounce music. This was like the early stages of hip-hop in the way that it was created…just a chopped up 808, a break beat and an MC. But another influence on me was Mantronix. Their style was very futuristic, so I incorporated that as well as Grand Master Flash’s [synthesized keyboard] sound. Just from me DJing in the club I knew that people were excited about certain sounds; the music that got the party started.

Greg D. was that dude that bothered the shit out of you like, ‘Man, I really need to rap.’ That’s what really drove me to work with him. He was a dude that stayed in the studio all day until we got the song completed. A lot of people would say that Greg’s style kind of irritated them into liking him. And he really did [laughs]. He would do a style over and over again until you liked it. When I was working with Gregory D the crazy thing is there was an earlier way to tracking songs. If you wanted to use a loop you made it with the actual record. We didn’t have samplers, so you had to loop that break over and over again. I didn’t even know you had to pay for samples around this time. I wasn’t thinking that way. That’s what you hear on those earlier songs with Gregory. I liked the way the old formats of hip-hop songs were made. I would later bring a lot of that style to Cash Money.”